ORLANDO, Fla. — After weeks of promises, Florida Department of Economic Opportunity launched a new portal Tuesday allowing submissions for unemployment claims from those who do not qualify for state benefits.

Federal lawmakers created the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) program under the CARES Act in an effort to provide unemployment benefits to those who do not qualify for state benefits.

PUA provides a base of $600 per week, in addition to funds ranging from $126 to $275 per week. The latter scale is part of a CARES Act provision that requires states provide benefits at a minimum equal to half the state’s rate, to a maximum equal to full benefit rate, above and beyond the $600. The combined provisions allow recipients to in reality receive $726 minimum per week and $875 maximum per week.

That includes those who are self-employed, freelancers, gig economy workers, 1099 workers, and others.

Those who may qualify under PUA benefits also include the growing number of applicants being deemed "ineligible" in recent days, despite adamant pressure they do qualify.

“I’ve been here in Florida for more than six years now, full time, corporate-level positions, and so that was part of the reason when I got declared ‘ineligible’ for insufficient base wages I was like there’s no possible way that is correct,” said Ben Foerster.

A veteran HR and corporate recruiter, Foerster says he is confused as to why his claim would be considered ineligible.

It’s the latest issue in what has been a more than month-long effort for Foerster to receive unemployment benefits.

“There’s no formal communication, they keep dancing around questions, they don’t want to answer anything, they just want to keep touting these numbers from the dashboard. Meanwhile people’s lives are being sent into shambles and they honestly think they’re doing a good job, and that’s just not the case,” Foerster said.

Since March 15, Florida Department of Economic Opportunity says it has received unemployment claims from 824,412 people.

Of those 664,158 have been processed.

  • 59.7 percent  (396,246) found to be eligible for benefits
  • 40.3 percent (267,912) found to be ineligible for benefits

The rate of "ineligible" claims slowly grew from last week, until a spike over the weekend with the agency disabled its online system to process claims.

That resulted in a surge of people turning to social media, illustrating why they believe they are more than qualified for state and federal benefits. Hundreds have contacted Spectrum News alone.

Some said online they were told there were glitches to the system and adamant DEO had errored in marking some claims ineligible.

DEO released a statement late Monday, essentially dismissing claims of errors or glitches.

“There are numerous reasons someone could be deemed not eligible for state reemployment benefits, including wage base period issues, lack of wage history, among others.

“Many of the individuals that were deemed ineligible this weekend could be eligible for federal benefits through the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program.” 

But then, after 5 p.m., DEO sent a new update, saying all people deemed ineligible should reapply for state benefits, as long as you applied originally before April 5 and you are a regular employee who believes they should have qualified.

Various accounts online have showcased why many people they are in fact eligible. One Twitter user commented that when his claim was transferred from the state’s Pega website to CONNECT, he found his income information no longer existed, and believes that is why he was deemed ineligible.

Spectrum News has followed up with DEO, asking what certainty they have that every single ineligible claim is in fact ineligible, and not marked ineligible for any outlier reason.

“There is complete chaos and utter catastrophe,” said Florida Rep. Anna Eskamani, D-District 47, of Orlando. “It does not make any sense.”

Eskamani said she believes there are too many instances of people who seem to qualify that have been ruled ineligible.

“Many of the folks we’ve spoken to, they have W2 jobs, they’ve had W2 jobs for years, it just seems they (DEO) check the box of ineligibility and without insight from DEO of why they’re ineligible, it leaves question marks and doesn’t give a person the opportunity to explain they got it wrong,” Eskamani said.

Eskamani said state lawmakers are also being left in the dark when it comes to DEO responses and policies.

“I have contacted Secretary Satter many times and he has yet to directly respond to me. Director Ken Lawson never directly responded back to me and so we are digging for information just like anyone else,” Eskamani said.

Frustrations for families are further fueled by unclear answers and the inability to get online to the state’s system or through to a call center.

Gov. Ron DeSantis and DEO have long touted 2,200 state workers helping DEO. However, as Secretary Jon Satter recently pointed out, those are not 2,200 state employees working full time for DEO, but rather working in staggered allotments of time, sometimes just an hour or two. 

Likewise, as the governor and DEO have also touted efforts to boost remote call center operations, that too is not yet fully up to speed. DEO several weeks ago signed three contracts worth up to $110 million for 2,000 remote call center employees. However, last week a DEO spokesperson said they were still not fully trained and using all 2,000 workers.

Frustrated Floridians have also expressed to Spectrum News that when they do get through to an agent, they often cannot answer questions and address their claim beyond being able to reset an identity PIN.

“As we all know, the system is designed to frustrate, to infuriate, to make you give up and that’s what we’re seeing with a lot of people. They’re exacerbated, but at the same time all you can do is continuing to fight, that’s really all you can do,” Foerster said. 

Meanwhile, DEO says the CONNECT site will now be down nightly from 8 p.m. to 7:59 a.m. so they can process claims faster. This will not affect people filing new claims through the Pegasus website.